BLANCHE: Innocence! Ha-ha! What a wretched performance! You didn’t know about the Fitzgerald boy? You weren’t one of those who accused me of seducing an eighth-grade student? You didn’t write the principal a letter saying “My sister is morally unfit for her position!” No? Ha-ha!—NO? NO! [She collapses into her chair shaken with convulsive laughter. The storm passes and Blanche buries her face in her arms on the dresser. Grace sighs and sits down in a small ivory rocker.]

GRACE [softly]: I have loved you so, Blanche, much more than girls usually love their big sisters, because you were everything that was fine and lovely. You were the beauty of the family as well as the brains. And the grace and the sweetness and charm. I was ashamed of my marriage at first because I knew you would feel that Jack was socially unsuitable and I dreaded having you come to visit us, as much as I wanted you to, because I hated to have you see this place we live in. So different from Belle Reve.

BLANCHE [faintly]: We lost Belle Reve.

GRACE: I know, we lost everything.

BLANCHE: You blamed me for it, but I couldn’t hold on to it, not on a teacher’s salary after—the long procession to the graveyard . . .

GRACE: You stood up under all of it so bravely.

BLANCHE: Ha! That’s what you think. My heart broken into a million sharp little pieces. And then—I’d always wanted to keep myself straight but— The devil got in me! After we lost Belle Reve—I went to bed—I went to bed with—strangers . . .

GRACE: We all do things we’re ashamed of sometimes, honey.

BLANCHE: Not just one or two of them, but more than I can remember. It was all that I could fill my empty heart with, there was nothing else but—intimacies—with strangers . . . After—Belle—Reve . . . At first I was fairly secretive about it, waited on corners pretending to fasten my shoe or stopped and looked in windows, affecting a very deep interest in—canned soup . . . [Laughs weakly.] Until they arrived at my elbow and said—Hello!

GRACE [trying to conceal her shock]: These are things I didn’t know about, Blanche.

BLANCHE: Well, now, you will know about them. And I would whisper back—“Room Seventy-Two at the Planters Hotel on Front Street!” Then walk on slowly—looking dreamily and innocently around—Miss Blanche Shannon, formerly of Belle Reve— A sweet young teacher—tender little orphan— Alone and unprotected in the world!

GRACE: I didn’t know about any of these things, Blanche.